


his future

by helsinkibaby



Category: NCIS
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Fluff, Pre Relationship, Romance, Speculation for the Christmas episode, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 12:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16765249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Nick and Ellie have a late night conversation while babysitting in Gibbs’s house.





	his future

**Author's Note:**

> So the synopsis for the season 16 Christmas ep came out and between that and an Instagram story, many wonderings were wondered in Ellick fandom. And lo, I said I would not write a fic that would be so easily jossed. And behold, the fandom said yes you will. My people, they know me well.

Nick had first watch so he was wide awake when the first shrill cry pierced the late night silence of Gibbs’s house. He was on his feet in seconds, heading not for the stairs and the source of the cry - he knew that was well in hand - but for the kitchen. He flipped the switch on the already filled kettle and while that was boiling he poured the carton of ready made formula into the bottle he pulled from the steriliser, blessing Delilah and her neatly typed instructions on how it worked, as well as the inventors of pre-mixed formula. He’d done this dance a couple of times with powdered formula when Amanda was a baby and it had not been fun. 

He’d just popped the bottle into a pot of boiling water to heat it up when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. They were accompanied by two voices, a baby’s cries transmuted to soft whimpers, a woman’s voice whispering things he couldn’t make out. Making his way back into the living room, he saw Ellie, still clad in the clothes she’d been wearing when she’d gone upstairs, her hair sticking up in a half dozen different directions, her gaze not on him but on the baby she carried in her arms. His head was nestled against her shoulder, one of her hands protectively resting on his back. One of the baby’s hands was fisted tightly in her hoodie and he was staring up at Ellie, his eyes wide, like he was completely entranced by her. 

For a moment, time seemed to slow down, then freeze altogether. In that split second, the view was imprinted on Nick’s brain: Ellie, sleep rumpled and gorgeous, a baby in her arms. Something twisted in Nick’s stomach at the sight, something that he couldn’t explain. Then Ellie’s eyes met his and her lips curled up in a small smile and suddenly he had no trouble naming the emotion. 

Want. Pure and simple want. 

“Please,” she said, her voice low, caught somewhere between humour and not, “tell me you have a bottle ready.” 

A sense of unreality had settled around Nick in the last few seconds, as if he’d suddenly found himself in someone else’s life. Shaking his head to clear the fog, he forced himself to respond with the kind of quip she was probably expecting. “You think I’d let you down like that, B?” He turned back towards the kitchen but not before he saw the grin that came to her lips. The surge of want came back stronger than ever and it was an effort to go back into the kitchen, to walk away from her and the sight she made, to give himself a minute to wrap his head around his reaction to it. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever thought that Bishop was gorgeous - he’d thought that since the first time he met her and it had never gone away. In fact, he found himself thinking it several times a day, so often that he barely noticed it any more. It was just something that was always there, like breathing, like gravity. But this, the way she looked at the kid, the way he looked up at her... it was sending Nick’s thoughts in a whole other direction. And while he was first to admit, to himself if no-one else, that his feelings for Ellie were distinctly more than just friends and colleagues, while they’d begun to spend a lot of time together outside of work, while he’d often entertained the notion of what it would be like to take her face in his hands and kiss her breathless, the feelings he was having tonight were something else entirely. It was like they were a real couple, a real mom and dad up in the middle of the night to feed their son. 

And he wanted it. More than he’d ever wanted anything. 

But this was not the time to be having these thoughts. Not when they were on the job. And definitely not when they were in Gibbs’s house. The idea of what Gibbs would say if he could read his mind - and honestly, he wouldn’t put it past the man - helped pull him back to reality, and the little hungry whimper from the living room didn’t hurt either. Bracing his hands on the kitchen counter, he counted to twenty in English and Spanish before he took the bottle out of the pot, drying it with a dish towel before testing it on his wrist. Deciding it was warm enough, he took another steadying breath before he went back into the living room. 

Where his breath caught again. 

Ellie had settled herself on one corner of the couch, the baby nestled in the crook of her left arm, his ear right over her heart. Her lips were moving but he couldn’t make out what she was saying, until he got a little closer to her and recognised the song as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” In Spanish. 

Damn. 

“Here.” His voice sounded rough to his own ears, but Ellie didn’t seem to notice anything untoward as she reached out to take the bottle from his outstretched hand. “It should be fine, I checked it,” he added and while he half thought she might check it again, she took his word for it, giving it a little shake before guiding it to the baby’s lips. 

“There we go, little guy,” she said as the sounds of contented sucking filled the room. “Wow, you were hungry.” 

If this were their baby, Nick would make a joke about like mother like son. The quip was there, on the tip of his tongue, ready to fall out and it was with the greatest of difficulty that he kept it back. Instead, he sat down on the couch beside them, tucked one leg up underneath, turning his body towards them. He took in every detail - the baby’s noises, Ellie’s smile, the lights of the Christmas tree casting shadows across the room - and he didn’t realise he’d spoken until the words, “You're good at this, B.” She glanced at him, clearly surprised but also clearly pleased. Well, he’d meant it as a compliment. “You ever think about having kids?” 

Something dark and sad flickered in her eyes. “I used to,” she admitted. “With Jake, it was never the right time... my job, his job, house hunting...” She shook her head, her lips twisting. “With Qasim... it never came up.” She glanced back at the baby, then back at him, a teasing smile appearing on her lips. “What about you? No little Nicks running around out there?” 

“Not that I know of.” She laughed softly at his joke, he smiled too. “Just never clicked with anyone enough, you know?” A memory of long dark curly hair and dark eyes, the one person he’d ever considered having all that with, danced across his memory and for once it didn’t sting. “It’s... ah... it’s actually the reason Annie and I stopped seeing one another.” 

Her head snapped around to him, blonde hair flying, hazel eyes wide. He couldn’t blame her for being surprised; he’d surprised himself by admitting that to her. “I didn’t know you were that serious,” she said slowly and there was a tone in her voice that he can’t read, knew he didn’t like. 

“We weren’t. Not really.” Ellie frowned and he took a deep breath to give him time to frame his thoughts. “We’d been seeing each other for a couple weeks, and it was nice, things were going well. Then she told me that we needed to talk. That her condition is genetic... hereditary.” Ellie’s jaw dropped like she was getting where he was going. “She said she was fine with losing her eyesight, she’d accepted it. But she didn’t want to put a kid through that; she wasn’t willing to play the genetic lottery with someone else’s life. And apparently, she’d been seeing someone before and they’d got serious and it fell apart after she told him that, so now, she’s open with it, right off the bat, she doesn’t want to have kids.”

Ellie was frowning. “There are other ways you could have kids together...” she said and he nodded. He’d already thought of all this, back when he and Annie had had that talk. But he’d realised something that night and, sitting here with her now, he wondered if he hadn’t really known it all along. 

“True. But that conversation... I had to sit down. Think about what I wanted and what I didn’t. And when I did, I realised...” He paused, trying to formulate this thoughts, then chuckled, running a hand over his lips. “Look, B, I know I gave McGee a lot of shit when the twins were born, about him being a baby bore and all...”

“He knows you didn’t mean it.” 

“Eeh...” He wrinkled his nose, there having been a slight element of truth in what he’d said. “Not really. So if you tell him I said this, I’ll deny it. But when I sat down and thought about it... or thought about not having that... I realised it’s something I want. The same thing McGee has, the same thing George and Lucia had with Amanda. A family with the person I love most in the world. And I want to be there for everything... for the sonograms and the morning sickness, the excitement of the first kick, the fighting over names... I want us to look at our kid and see if they have my ears or your eyes or Great Aunt Maria’s nose...” He stopped, her wide eyes having given away how much he’d surprised her. He shrugged. “That’s what I want. And if I can’t have that with someone... I don’t want to settle for anything less.” 

There was a soft smile on Ellie’s lips. “Nick Torres, closet romantic.” 

“I know, who’d have thought, right?” He reached out carefully to the baby, where the toe of his too big romper suit, a hand me down from McGee and Delilah, was wrinkling up around his knee. As he pulled it straight, the baby kicked a little, twisting in Ellie’s arms. Nick froze for a second, waiting for the cry that he was sure was about to burst forth if that bottle left the child’s mouth, but then the moment passed and he returned to his contented sucking. Nick breathed a sigh of relief but when he looked back at Ellie, instead of annoyance on her face, he saw only amusement. “But seriously, B,” he continued, picking up as if he’d never paused at all, “you tell anyone about this conversation and we’ll be having words.” 

Ellie actually rolled her eyes. “Please. You say that like I’m scared of you.” He smacked his hand to his chest, all pretend shock and she grinned brightly before looking back to the baby. “Besides,” she said softly, not taking her eyes off the child in her arms, “I think you’ll make a great dad.” 

She bit her lip right after she said it, like she was trying to keep any more words from coming out but what she said was enough to have a warm feeling swelling in Nick’s chest, something that felt a little like pride, a little like hope. “Well, I think you’ll be a great mom,” he told her and he wasn’t just saying that to echo what she’d said to him. “Look at you with this little guy... you’re a natural.” 

She looked around to him then, her eyes huge and dark in the dim light of the room and her breath caught audibly in her throat. Which was pretty much confirmation that everything he was feeling, everything he was thinking, was written all over his face. But she didn’t look away, didn’t blink, just kept her eyes on his as she shifted, ever so slowly, ever so carefully on the couch, bringing herself closer to him. She couldn’t get very far, not with her arms full of a feeding baby so he did what she couldn’t, scooting over until he was sitting beside her, the legs touching. His fingers itched to move around her shoulders, pull her close but fear of disturbing the kid won out, to say nothing of the fact that they were sitting on Gibbs’s couch, in Gibbs’s living room. It wasn’t exactly the time or place to start something he definitely wanted to finish. 

He was spared from having to do anything when the baby’s bottle popped out of his mouth with a matching sound that made them both jump in the silence of the room. They both glanced down sharply at the baby, Ellie placing the bottle on to the coffee table in front of them before looking to Nick. “Do you have a-?” Her voice trailed off as she saw him holding the muslin cloth - another thing Delilah had packed, insisting they’d need it - out towards her. “Thanks,” she said, using it to dab at the baby’s mouth before placing it across his chest, then sitting him up and patting his back. 

Looking at the kid’s expression, all Nick could do was laugh. Ellie’s fingers were around his neck, holding him up, and his head was tilted to the side, pudgy cheeks all squished up. His eyes were all but closed and Nick had seen expressions like that before, in another time and place. “Look at that.” His finger reached out, completely of its own accord, he swore, and ran down one cheek. “Kid’s completely milk drunk.” Ellie opened her mouth to speak but right at that moment, the baby let out a burp that seemed like it was way too loud to come from such a tiny human. “Or maybe just drunk,” Nick added, which had Ellie looking at him suspiciously. 

“My mom used to say that my nana advised her to put a drop of whiskey into our bottles when we couldn’t sleep. Something you want to tell me?” 

His eyebrows went all the way up at that. “Only that your nana sounds like my kind of woman and I wish I could have met her?”

Ellie smiled, giving the baby one final pat on the back before leaning him back into her arms. She shifted on the couch, pressing herself right back against it and gathering the baby closer to her chest. He gave a contented little snuffle as he turned his head towards her, his hand reaching up, fingers extended, even as his eyes stayed closed. 

Once more, Nick’s finger moved without him thinking about it, touching the baby’s hand. He knew it was pure reflex that made the kid’s fingers close around his but his heart did something funny in his chest anyway. 

“Now you’ve done it.” Ellie’s voice was a whisper and it might even have been because of the sleeping baby. “You can’t get away now.” 

His eyes met hers then, saw uncertainty in the dark depths. Uncertainty and, it must be said, a little bit of hope. “I don’t want to,” he told her and when she smiled at him, it wasn’t just hope he saw in her eyes. 

It was his future.


End file.
